


Awake From Empty Vows

by tous_les_coups



Series: Postlapsarian Cycle [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Human Castiel, Hurt Castiel, M/M, POV Castiel, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-14
Updated: 2013-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-20 04:06:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/882754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tous_les_coups/pseuds/tous_les_coups
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel arrives exhausted at the bunker, but the door is locked and nobody answers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Awake From Empty Vows

**Author's Note:**

> This piece can stand alone, but also functions as part 2 of my Postlapsarian Cycle. I think it's less depressing in sequence.

Castiel rubs his face, hands smooth, fingernails ragged. Unclean. His remaining face. His own hands, scarcely used but useful still. He can curl them around knives and firearms. Put pressure on a throat. Button his shirt. Unbutton his shirt. Twist open a doorknob.

Not this one.

The door to Dean’s home is locked. Iron set in brick set in concrete, looming over him in the hillside, he won’t fathom this. Doors were never a problem before.

He is unclean. He has walked for nights on end, he has brushed arms with strangers in muddled streets and stinking buses and he is unclean, the forest floor still crumbling down his spine. Walking and walking feels like one long night, the sun flashes so dim, Castiel’s eyes are diminished, but that is nothing.

Castiel has never needed sight, but fuck, the Earth is loud in every way that doesn’t matter. He has walked, this weeklong night, without the secret hum, without Dean’s thoughts in his ears. If Dean still prays he cannot hear it, if Dean is praying now he doesn’t know.

He thought he knew loneliness before.

He didn’t.

Knocks his knuckles on the door, his knuckles hurt. Knocks against Dean’s home and he hurts like landing on the _why are his hands so quiet_. He can’t open—not this—

The rage surprises Castiel. Takes him out from golden rationality, out from silent net of patience—he is pounding the door, thuds echoing, blood speckling on corroded iron—the blood is from his hands, his hands hurt. He hurts and this is the best he’s felt in weeks. Can’t be, don’t need to be, humans don’t have time to be patient.

Blood on his hands. Blood thudding through his heart.

Castiel almost screams; muffled, it sounds like sobbing. This is a breakdown. This may be broken.

_Let me in the gates_ , his eyes burn and he doesn’t know when he started praying to Dean instead of—but he knows why. Sometimes, Dean answers. _Why can’t he answer now_. Castiel breathes. Breathes. Takes the spirit of this world inside him.

Breathes. The air is heavy and tastes of iron.

He has thought before of falling. Hard not to, Castiel has fallen and risen and fallen every way imaginable but this, short whiplash years. His grace already skyburnt long before he—don’t think there, not now, not yet.

Is it wrong to think of this as falling? When he was sworn to love humanity above all else? Perhaps that vow no longer holds, perhaps he can hate himself now with impunity. Castiel leans back against the brick, but even that is suddenly too much, and he sinks, sits with his arms draped around his knees. His coat is dirty enough already.

He has thought before of falling, but never fathomed he might land alone. Land in dirt with leaves tangling his hair and stains on his coat and he doesn’t remember what piece of forest scratched through to draw blood from his forearm.

Landed alone. A dozen empty pockets. Barely remembers the walk through the forest, he doesn’t know how humans can forget so much of such brief lives. He has forgotten too much already. Empty wind in his ears. No phone to call Dean. When he reached a city he thought of borrowing one, but he didn’t even know Dean’s number. The planes of his back under cotton, yes, every fine hair on his forearms, perhaps, but nothing of any use at all, no piece of information that might allow him to determine if Dean is even still _can’t think of that, don’t think of that, please don’t_ , and he has always been a trifle disobedient.

The night he begged shelter in a chapel, he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t breathe in the sight of his sisters rendered glass, his brothers stone with wings, once when he breathed wrong he rendered himself in glass. He paid those sins over and over but he is paying still, and he left the chapel before dawn. The house of God is no longer home.

There is no home if this door rests impassive. Castiel exhales. His roughshod soul has left rust on the air.

The world darkens. He has closed his eyes. His breath shudders, slows, evens out, and he will think many times that he will never become accustomed to sleep. At least without stars his dreams are empty.

Hours pass, and Castiel wakes to a song of profanity. A hand on his left shoulder. Dean’s face not close enough to his.

“You fucking _idiot_ , Cas, where the fuck have you been, is it that damn hard to pick up a fucking _phone_ \--”

Unclean. Blood on his hands. But he doesn’t hurt at all.


End file.
